Wine And Art In The Vineyard.

-

Barely 3km from McLaren Vale township lies the d'Arenberg vineyard with cellar door, restaurant, and the usual bits and bobs associated with the intersection of wineries and tourists. D'Arenberg has a long history in wine-making under the guiding hand of four generations of the same family (five if you count the one currently studying viticulture at University).  The first three generations chugged along producing wine and selling it to tourists and everything was hunky dory, and then along came generation number four and before you could say "You can't do that at a winery!" he had built a 4-storey Rubicks Cube in the middle of the grape vines and filled it up with a heap of surrealist art topped off with no less than a multi-million dollar Salvador Dali exhibition.

We paid our $30 for a wine-tasting on the top floor, which gave us entry to the bottom floor and all the ones in between, so off we went for wee bit of culture and spot of wine-tasting (Roger) and giving our wine tastes away to our willing spouse (me).  

Being the committed followers of football that we are not, we hadn't realised that today was the day of The Gather Round, where AFL teams from Melbourne and Perth played a game in South Australia and subsequently all the AFL fans flew in to Adelaide and a goodly proportion of them decided to come to the d'Arenberg Cube to kill time before the game.  "You're lucky you weren't here this morning,"  said Brydie as she expertly shepherded us through our wine tasting.  "It was madness!"  We had, by great good fortune, booked our tasting for the lull when all the fans had gone to watch the game.

Brydie spoke highly of her employer, the 4th-generation not-quite-conventional d'Arenberg wine maker, in a way that suggested he was as eccentric as the whole cube/Dali thing would indicate.

The first clue to this eccentricity was the steel sculptures scattered around the grounds of the vineyard, with views out across the McLaren valley.  Not Dali sculptures mind you, but still a wide variety of style and execution.

There was even a rubber-boot band.


The bottom floor of the Cube was a collection of rooms of surrealist art, all of it related to the wine brands produced by the d'Arenberg vineyard.  Not knowing the relevant wine brands, a lot of it went over my head.  The rest of it went over my head anyway, because it was surrealist art and we didn't have time to scan all the little QR codes and listen to the explanations.  I could have spent hours in there but our wine tasting awaited on the fourth floor and we still had the Dali exhibition to go.


The second floor of the Cube held the amenities and a private function area.  I'd forgive you if you thought that there wasn't anything exciting about the amenities, but you would be wrong.  From the inner cubicle artwork to the camouflaged door to the challange of turning on the taps, it was all a thrilling ride from beginning to end.

I never thought I would post pictures from a toilet, but here we are.

On the throne; Mirror; Basins with puzzling taps; Just don't be in a hurry because it's hard to find the cubicle door.

The Dali exhibition inhabited the third floor, along with a collection of Dali-esque paintings by local surrealist artists.  We wandered around getting up close and personal with the sculptures and enjoying the comfortable multi-coloured chairs.




We decided not to pick up a minor Dali sculpture for the lounge room we didn't have, and headed up to the fourth floor where we met the lovely Brydie and discovered that we had, by good luck and not good management, avoided the football crowds. We had a lovely time with Brydie, sampling several wines and discovering that we did not have expensive tastes and that Roger was as susceptible as anyone else to the lure of buying a particular wine once he knew he liked it.


 From the fourth floor balconies we looked out over the vineyards, down the valley and out to the sea. Down below tourists clustered around the two sculptures that flanked the entry paths, and flowed past the bottle shop as they collected the wines that they had bought during their tastings.  A white marquee housed a fine exhibition of old masters who we didn't have time to see: we'll have to come back. 

We finally waved goodbye to the patient and busy Brydie, already putting out wine glasses for the next round of tasters, picked up our bottles of wine from the shop, and took ourselves the 3km back through the vineyards to home and a dog who was not impressed by our absence.

The Salvador Dali exhibition is on loan to the d'Arenberg Cube from the Dali Universe in Switzerland, and its time at d'Arenberg has been extend into 2025.  If you happen to be in McLaren Vale, go see the exhibition.  You'll have to suffer through a wine-tasting and a fascinating collection of surrealist art installations, and you'll probably come away burdened by bottles of wine, but you'll find it's worth it.  And if you have a cool million or so in your back pocket you might find a nice little artwork for your lounge room.



A larger version of the elephant with trumpeter stands in the Rundle St mall in Adelaide city.


I like this door.


A final view from the car park across the d'Arenberg vineyards.









Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

23/12/21 The Dinosaurs of Newtown

-
Image
Some time in the months before Christmas, somewhere near Newtown, a shop had a sale of inflatable Christmas dinosaurs. Lots of people thought that a large inflatable dinosaur was just what they needed for their 2021 outdoor festive decor, so they bought the dinosaurs and then discovered that, once inflated, they were very big. Not as big as a real dinosaur would have been, obviously, but certainly big enough to be inconvenient if you happen to live in a trendy little terrace house with a handkerchief of front lawn and second story verandah almost the size of half a vegemite sandwich.   Dinosaur #1: taking up all the available verandah space I imagine that at this stage the dinosaur purchasers may have considered the size of the dinosaur (inflated or otherwise) in relation to their rubbish bin, but were likely prevented from this course of action by children who, enamoured of dinosaurs, had welcomed the creature into the Christmas fold and called it something festive like Rudolph, o...
Read more

Minor Adventures on Quiet Days

-
Image
 Roger took himself off on the train to South Australia for a week, so BD and I decided to have some adventures of our own, albeit not as exciting as riding the interstate train to Adelaide and getting to have an up-close stickybeak at the flooded Murray River. We took ourselves off to the Ormond Lookout to watch the sun set instead. As did rather more people than what we had anticipated. Mobs, in fact. We found a patch of dirt grass and settled in.  "I'm gonna come back here!" declared BD.  She wriggled around a bit: our patch of grass was on quite a slope and she kept sliding out of her shorts.  "With a chair," she added. In between admiring other people's dogs and taking observational lessons in 101 Ways To Take A Selfie, we watched the sun trundle slowly toward the horizon. No sunset is complete without a picnic. There she goes. Further down the beach, a container ship puttered across the horizon under the gaze of a lone beach-sitter.  And us, of course...
Read more

Quiet Life with Cat

-
Image
 After all the excitement of hospital stays, Emergency Department visits, and trying to balance the cost-benefit ratio of hospital cafeteria food, life became a little more settled.  After a week of blessedly boring drug levels BD was given a reprieve from daily blood tests and we, therefore, were released from daily drives to the nearest Melbourne Pathology lab.  We did some laundry and did some cleaning and I hopped on my bicycle and went for a ride or two.  Not that the weather was very conducive to enjoyable and relaxing bike riding, but I went anyway. All was fine at Albert Park, where the swans put on a good show, playing happy families all across the playing fields.  But that didn't last for long. Back at home the new cat let his crazy out to play.  He zoomed up and down the hallway in the middle of the night; scared the bejeebers out of us by jumping on the sound bar and blasting us with high volume TV; hid under chairs and batted at our ankles as w...
Read more